Edward Ride
by Hooded-Figurine
Summary: He has been a part of the Gate for years. Now he's finally out, but he's not home. And he's… different. AU, Chimera!Ed. Rated T for swearing and violence. Contains Ed/Nudge, Ed/OC, and Max/Fang. 1st of many! OFF HIATUS!
1. Chapter 1

This is kind of a prequel chappie. Very Important Prequel. It is a bit short, but trust me, it looked _way _longer on Word. Anywhos, enjoy!**

* * *

**

**Ch-1  
**

I launched myself at Father, and knew in that split second of flight that something bad was about to happen. I saw the miniature sun form in his hand; saw Hoenhiem standing on the other side, his back turned to help Teacher to her feet. I felt the explosive energy hit my skin, tearing it from the bone. Then I was in front of the gate, and then I was in it. The blackness filled my ears and mouth and nose, it coated me like a second skin and numbed me to everything. It crept into me, and I became one of them.

People came, most were those who had died, but some were fools who had committed the taboo. Only a few of the fools were strong enough, but when they left I felt something. My siblings, fellow children of the Gate, did not understand the spark that flared inside of me whenever a person came, and nor did I. As part of a whole, this **spark** was foreign, but it intrigued me. One day a woman came, her long black hair braided into many dreadlocks that were tied back into one thick ponytail.

She looked into the gate with calmness, knowing her time was come, almost seeming to search our faces for someone. Her eyes lingered on me, first narrowing, then widening in shock. "Edward?"

The name meant nothing to me; I had been part of the gate for longer than I could remember. But a tiny part of me, buried deep, responded with the word that fit this woman. "Teacher?"

She stepped closer, an odd act, and reached out to me, touching my face. "Edward Elric, I've missed you." Her voice was almost a motherly croon, and I felt the blackness peel away under her warm hand.

Stepping even closer, she grabbed me under the arms and pulled me out of the blackness that had been my home for what felt like my whole life. It peeled away from me, exposing the black leather pants and jacket with a black tank top underneath. She hugged me, and the sensation of touch was so alien that I froze in place. I felt my siblings reach out, and the friendly blackness enveloped me again. It wrapped her too, and she fought to land beside me.

As soon as the door was closed, she turned around and pressed back, dragging me with her. She wriggled us through to the very back, and we found the inside of a second gate. "Edward, we're getting out of here. Focus, remember who you are." I shook my head, and she scowled, "I should have know, midgets have horrible memories."

I felt that buried spark flare up again, "**WHO'S A FLEA SIZED PIPSQUEAK MIDGET?!**" I blinked, an image coming to me of a boy in a red jacket, his long blond hair tied back in a braid except for the bangs that hang down to frame his golden eyes.

The woman smiled, pushing open the door and pulling us both through, "Come on Ed, we're getting you out of here."

We seemed to fall out, leaving our bodies in the darkness of the Gate. Soaring, we were pulled towards a large gray building in the middle of a burning desert, some miles away from a lake that nothing grew around. We dove into the building, soaring side by side past people in white coats and rooms filled with chimeras in dog crates. We glided through a door and into a room containing only a black haired woman working at a lab table. I felt my friend enter the woman, while I was pulled towards her stomach, and into the microscopic being that lay inside.

* * *

The scene of inspiration is probably the funniest part of this whole series-in-the-making. My sister said "How much do I owe you for Hollywood?" in a game of Monopoly, and I pictured Ed saying that, as in **'**how much damage did I do?**'** Then MaxRide popped into my head and I pictured Ed flying with Fang, Iggy and Gazzy at the Hollywood sign, as in book 3.  
**POW!** That moment gave birth to this plot bunny, and a second one that DotTheAmazing is writing in her head.

ANYWHOS, I'm trying to be at least a little bit origianal, so concrit is welcomed!


	2. Chapter 2

**Heyals! Just got a few things to do here.**

**1- My thanks to Corsiva Vyrae and youfarted for putting this story on alert. You two get Cinco de Mayo candy!**

* * *

Ch-2

Nine months later, the woman gave birth to a baby boy, who was pronounced dead. Secretly, he was brought to the woman's work place and thrown in a crate. When he was almost a year old, two infants were placed across the hall from him. A third joined the other two a month or so later, and they grew.

Their wings grew out, and they could have flown, but they were still prisoners, still numbers, still _experiments_. The children grew, and one day the man who watched over them loaded their crates onto a truck and drove off. But the boy's cage fell off, and two security guards on patrol found him later that day.

Winged Boy's POV

"I told you I don't know!"

They zap me again with the horrid wrist collar, "You're lying kid, now tell us, _who_ took the other experiments and _where_ are they?"

"Jeb took them somewhere! I don't know where they are!"

The collar delivers no shock, and the three look at each other, then their little handheld computers before the tallest man speaks. "Thing's telling the truth. Batchelder took them."

The slightly shorter man, whose nametag says Josh, speaks next. "Well I say fuck him, we've got Subject 4, and the Erasers can hunt down the rest while we study it."

The black haired woman grabs me under the arms and lifts me back into my cage, locking the door with her ID. "Josh, Ready the treadmill, I want to see his endurance readings."

The men wheel me into another room and hook my wrist collar to one of the treadmills with a wire. Turning on the machine, they make me step on and run for a long time. I pace myself, I can outrun a full-grown Eraser over distance, and they're oversized freaks of nature. When the woman comes in again, her eyes open wide. "Josh, how fast is that treadmill going?"

"About twenty-five Zu."

"And how long ago did he start running?"

"It's been running since just a few minutes after you gave the order."

She walks over and kneels down, "For such a shrimpy little boy he sure can run. Maybe it's an extra mutation?"

I snarl at her, jumping onto the bar my hand is hooked to. "Who're you calling a midget? Hag."

She smacks me, and a shock from my wrist collar sends me scrambling for the treadmill. "Josh, up the speed once every five minutes."

He looks at her, "By how much?"

"Start with one mile, then continuously increase it." He nods, and she beckons to the second man, "Sig, honey, come with me. We're supposed to try out some test drugs on the latest Eraser batch."

He nods, and they leave, I turn my head to face forwards again, and empty my mind of all thought. I don't know how much later it is, but eventually my legs begin to feel like bags of wet cement, and I fall off. I feel the shocks, but nothing can make me move from this spot right now. I hear a whistle from Josh, "Wow, almost five straight hours." I hear him stand up and walk over to me, crouching so close that I can see the individual threads of his jeans. "Kid, you're something else entirely. You're even better than those other recombinants."

A little voice in the back of my head speaks up, and I relay the words to the man in as snotty a tone as I can muster. "Of course. Cause I'm not one of them. I'm better."

He laughs; unclipping me and stuffing me back into my crate. "And how is that?"

I look up, my yellow eyes burning into him. "'Cause I'm not a recombi-something. I'm a chimera."

* * *

**Yes, it is kinda cheesy, and rather short. But this is gonna be important in one of the later books, I think. And the chapters will be getting longer, I swear.**

**The more Reviews/Faves/Alerts I get, the faster I'll type! Look! there's the button right there! Doesn't it look so cute and lonely and _clickable_?**


	3. Chapter 3

**Heyals! Just got a few things to do here.**

**1- I don't own FMA or Max Ride, they belong, respectively, to Hiromu Arwakawa and James Patterson.  
2-I appologize for taking so long, I misplaced the file.**

* * *

Ch-3**  
**Ed's POV

I look around, "Where am I?"

I notice the man looking at me. "You're even better than those other recombinants."

He gestures at the crates of chimeras lining the walls of the room we just entered, and I respond impulsively. "Of course. Cause I'm not one of them. I'm better."

He smirks, loading my cage into a slot between two poor kids with some organs on the **outside **of their bodies. I realize that it wasn't actually me who said those words a minute ago; I'm just a passenger in this body. I feel wings against my, **our** back, and whisper to myself, "I'm a chimera." The owner of this body relays my words, and I look out through our shared eyes, examining the reflection of our face in the man's glasses.

I don't see much but short, lank, golden hair before he stands up, muttering "We've got to run more tests tomorrow."

The boy whose body I share laughs quietly, "Bring it on, I'm going to show you guys that a boy like me can do **anything**."

I feel like I should knock or something, so that's what I do. "Uhhm hey. Kid? Where am I?" He seems to appear in front of me, and I think of how Ling described being a prisoner in his body when Greed was in him. I shake off my curiosity and pay attention to the kid. "Yeah, can you tell me where I am?"

"You're in my head, and I want you to get out."

I nod, getting the feeling that this kid can see me. "Yeah, this body is pretty small, especially for two people."

He swings a fist at me wildly, "**I'm not small!**"

I blink, only just now noticing his yellow eyes. "Who are you?"

He bounces around, "I'm Birdie."

I smile at his childish energy; "I'm Edward Elric, and I take it you're a human/avian chimera?"

He frowns in confusion, "What does avian mean?"

"It's the scientific word for birds."

"And chimera?"

I frown sadly, "A chimera is a being that has been combined with one or more other species."

He nods, "Yeah! That makes sense, 'cause I'm part bird." He shakes out his wings a little, and I note the smoothness with which they're attached to him, no marks at all.

I look the kid over, he's skinny, but there are muscles there. His blond hair is lank and dirty, and his eyes are a piercing golden yellow that matches my own almost exactly. "We look the same."

He looks at me, head tilted slightly to one side, "Yeah, we do."

"Can I call you Birdie?"

He nods eagerly, "Yeah! And I'll call you little man in my head!"

I snarl, "No, you're going to call me Ed, or Edward. Fullmetal is fine too. But not **little man in my head**."

He nods nervously, frightened of my fierce look. I close my eyes and slide into unconsciousness, and I can sense that he does the same.

The days all blur together into one big series of tests, and the woman who seems to be in charge of me looks familiar. The men who work with her address her as Zu, and she doesn't wear a nametag so I can't work with that. She's gentler than the men, and the look in her eyes says that she loves me as her own child. One day when I collapse from exhaustion after running on the treadmill for an immeasurable amount of time, she picks me up and sings a familiar lullaby as she puts me back in my cage. Then, before she locks the door, she reaches in and pats my head. "Sweet dreams Ed." And I'm too tired to wonder for long how she knows **my** name.

One day, a little boy wanders in looking lost. "Hello?"

I can't see him very well in the gloom, but something about him makes me want to reply. As he walks further into the room, I get Birdie's attention. "Hey, let me take the wheel. I want to talk to this kid." He nods, and we switch places, him slipping into the recesses of our head and me filling our skin. "Hey kid, are you lost?"

The little boy, who had begun to cry quietly, looks up, trying to locate the speaker. "Who are you?"

"I'm Ed. I'm over here."

I stick out my hand and wave at him, he waves back hesitantly. "Are you an experiment?"

"Yes. But I'm going to get out of here some day."

He gets to his feet and walks closer, looking at my face, "What type are you?"

I turn it over in my head, deciding to simplify it for him. "I'm a bird kid. I have wings."

He scowls, "I don't like bird kids; they took my dad away."

I wince, knowing what it's like to lose a father. "But I'm still here; I didn't take your dad anywhere."

He smiles, and I know that I've won his heart. "Ok, you're Ed, right?" I nod, "Well my name's Ari."

He chatters on and on about his life, and I listen, soaking it up. Eventually, the woman I call Hag comes in with a syringe. Her eyes widen, "Ari! What are you doing here?"

"Talking to Ed."

She scowls at him, "Well I need to draw some blood and do a few injections, so scat." Behind her back, he mouths 'See ya tomorrow' and runs out the door, a goofy grin plastered all over his face. Hag turns to me, "Now, Shrimp. Stick out your arm." I snarl, but put it out reluctantly. She turns it over, sticking the repulsive needle into the vein at the crook of my elbow, breaking the small scab that has been forming.

I let Birdie take control again, and we both cringe every time the needle goes in. Hag pats my head through the cage bars, "Alright Shorty, tomorrow you're going to be doing your exercises **outside**." I scowl at her and she leaves, calling over her shoulder "Oh, and tomorrow it's going to be 33 degrees and raining."

The outdoors training is horrendous, we have to sprint around and around on an enormous track while the clouds dump buckets of sleet on our head. Every few minutes we switch places, so by the end of the day we're exhausted, cold, and soaked to the bone. Sig and Josh, the men who work with Hag, talk about us like we're not even there. "Can you believe it? The thing ran a hundred miles before its oxygen intake increased at all!"

"Yeah."

Hag lifts us back to our feet, "Alright, today you get to **walk **back." Normally we would have celebrated this new little freedom, but our legs feel like bags of wet cement, and our crate is on the other end of the building.

Hag pokes us between our bare shoulder blades, "Move it." we obediently plod after her, and stop when she stops outside a door that is **not **the door to the room with our cage in it. She places her hand on a pad and the door slides open to reveal a sparsely furnished room. "Your performance has impressed some higher-ups, so you're being upgraded."

Our eyes are as wide as dinner plates, "Really?"

"Yes, really. Now get in."

She kicks us in, and as the door shuts I call out "Wait! What about Ari? How will he know where I am?" I've grown quite fond of the little boy who so resembles Al, and I'd even go so far as to call him my brother.

"He'll be informed."

I climb onto the mattress, it's hard, but **anything **is better than a dog crate. I close my eyes and look inwards, wanting to speak with Birdie. I enter the smallish room in my head that is now quite familiar, and see him sitting cross-legged, his golden wings splayed out behind him. His eyes are closed, and he looks more peaceful than I've been in a long time. "Birdie? It's your turn."

His eyes open, "No, it's yours. I like it in here, you can have my body, just let me sleep in peace."

The poor kid, he went through so much before I woke up and started helping him through it all. "Alright. I'll leave you here in peace and lock the door." He smiles at me as I leave; his whispered thanks the last thing that comes out of the tiny room. The kid would rather be a prisoner in his own body than live his life taking turns with me. I open my eyes, and am mortified to feel tears in them. I lie down and put my head on the lumpy pillow, letting go of consciousness and sliding into blackness.

I wake up in a panic, automatically assessing my chances of escape from this unknown place. I take a deep breath and un-clench my hands, remembering that this is my room now, and if I keep co-operating I'll never go back in the cage again. The door opens and an Eraser lumbers in. I look him over; he doesn't look as human as the others I've seen standing guard. He turns his head slowly and looks at me, a smile splitting his face.

I've seen that smile before. "Ari? Ari!" I leap out of bed and run to him, gazing up in amazement at how tall he is. "Ari, what did they do to you?"

He drops to his knees, smile fading fast. "They Eraserfied me. I wanted to be special, like you and Max."

I wonder momentarily who Max is, but quickly focus again on Ari. "Ari, I swear, I **will **get you out of here. We'll run away together, you're my little brother."

He grins again, and I'm glad I can make him smile. "Yeah, we'll run away to where Dad is. And we can all live together."

I nod, "Yeah, we'll be together forever. We just need to make a plan."

* * *

**The more Reviews/Faves/Alerts I get, the faster I'll type! Look! there's the button right there! Doesn't it look so cute and lonely and _clickable_?**


	4. Chapter 4

**Heyals! Just got a few things to do here.**

**1- I don't own FMA or Max Ride, they belong, respectively, to Hiromu Arwakawa and James Patterson.  
2-I feel obliged to thank _GrilledPeanutButter_ for their generous reviews, thank you, seeing my inbox with nothing but reviews in it was very cheering, just what I needed after a 3 hour detention for being a minute late to Bio.  
3- My thanks also goes out to _metang _and _Junsei-Yami _and all the others who reviewed/faved/alerted this story.**

* * *

Ch-4**  
**

(Alright, seriously, this is the last chapter I'm putting this in. From now on, assume it's Ed's POV unless I tell you otherwise.)  
**Ed's POV**

Six months after I promised Ari we'd run away, we've finally got a plan in place. Tonight, at exactly 9PM, I'm going to crawl out through the hole I made in the wall under my bed and run for the Eraser barracks. Then I'll jump into the Eraser dorm to help Ari fight his way out, since he's a lousy fighter, at least compared to me. I watch the digital wall clock impatiently; afraid to close my eyes for fear that I may actually fall asleep.

The little numbers finally line up as 0-9-0-0, and I fly under the bed, wriggling out into the back of a storage closet, behind a shelving unit with a solid back. The door opens easily, and I take off down the hall, turning down the familiar corridors towards Ari.

I round the final corner and scramble backwards, swearing quietly. "Shit, shit, shit. Guards. Damn it!" I peek around the corner and calculate my chances, slim to none. "I'm sorry Ari, I can't save you."

Turning on my heel, I race back towards the fire exit I passed a few halls back. I'm extremely glad that I'm on the fifth floor, because this building has an outdoors fire escape like I've seen in movies. I leap over the railing and snap open my wings, gliding to the edge of the woods where I land and begin running, hoping to lose them in the dense foliage. I begin to run, wincing slightly as my feet hit every single freaking sharp thing on the ground and the trees grab at my bare arms and chest, leaving long, thin scratches. The sudden baying of blood hounds behind me makes my knees lock momentarily, and I stumble into a briar bush.

"Shit, shit, shit!" I can outrun an Eraser over distance if I've got a head start, but dogs can run faster than me, and being caught isn't exactly my favorite option. I see weak light coming from ahead of me, and slam between the trees at top speed, praying for a clearing so I can take off. But instead of a clearing I find a sheer cliff, which drops away into a very, _very_ deep canyon. "No! No!" But I can't dig my feet in deep enough, and go skidding over the edge.

Falling towards the ground far below, I fling my wings open impulsively and catch the wind. They fill like a parachute and the sudden drag practically yanks them out of their sockets. Working through the pain, I flap once, twice, and fly off down the canyon, slowly leaving the School, the Erasers, and Ari, behind.

I head east-southeast, and find a tiny cave high up on a cliff over a big lake. Skidding to a clumsy stop, I collapse to the sandy floor and drop off immediately, wings still spread out.

I wake up in the morning and panic for the shortest time before remembering where I am. I'm not at the School, I'm free! Smiling from ear to ear, I walk out onto the left hand ledge to watch the sun rise. Out of the corner of my eye, I see something move. Turning my head just the smallest fraction of an inch, I see that there are a ton of nests, each about two feet across. Swearing in my head, I see that most of the nests have fluffy fledglings in them, along with very large adults. Slowly, I extend one wing towards them to let them catch my scent. Several **loooong** minutes later, they relax, and I allow myself to breathe again.

_Greetings, fledgling._ I look around, who said that? _I did._ One of the larger hawks hops over to me and bats my leg with its wing. _My name is Astor._

I sit down, wings still out, and think back at him _I'm Edward._

He nods, and takes off. _Follow me, young Edward, you have much to learn._ I leap into the open air, and wheel around with him for hours, until my stomach growls with hunger. _Edward, you must hunt._

_Hunt? But I don't know how._

_Then I will show you._ He banks gracefully, and I dive down after him, _Do as I do._ He swoops down over the grass and grabs a rabbit in his talons. I land slightly less clumsily than before, and quickly set a twitch up snare. _Young Edward, what are you doing?_

_I'm hunting, my way._ He lands in a tree a fair distance away, and once I'm sure that the snare is set properly, I join him. I pointedly avoid looking at the trap, only glancing back at it when I hear it being sprung. I glide down and land on a rocky stretch of shore, selecting a long, sharp sliver of rock with which to cut down my catch. The rabbit looks at me with pleading eyes, and I grant it a quick, probably painless death by stabbing it in the heart with my new dagger. _No dumb fox is getting my dinner **this** time_

Astor perches on my shoulder, nipping me lightly in a sign of fatherly affection/pride. _Well done Edward, you learn fast._

I laugh, the sound ringing through the air as we flap back towards the cave. _My other teacher didn't think so_. Lighting a fire, I skin and gut the rabbit before skewering it and letting it roast. Turning the animal slowly over the fire, it occurs to me for the first time to wonder how I can tell what Astor is saying. _Astor, how come I can understand you?_

The hawk takes a hop closer to me, tilting his head to one side. _I do not know, but my instinct tells me to teach you._

I nod, and pull my rabbit from the flames, biting into it without hesitation. "Ah! Ah! Hot! Hot! HOT!" swallowing quickly, I hold the crispy critter at a distance. "Fuck, I forgot how hot these are at first." Astor leapt backwards at my voice, and I quickly form the mental link that we use to communicate. _Sorry for scaring you._

He nods, and takes off as I bite into my lunch again, this time eating the whole thing in just a few bites. I leap from the ledge, gliding down to the lake again to reset my snare and take a quick bath. I look up and see Astor swooping down to grab a snake, then bringing it back up to one of the nests. After my bath, I fly up to where Astor has perched. _Show me more._ He nods, and we wheel through the sky until the sun goes down and the temperature falls.

_Young Edward, you have learned enough for today, eat now, and sleep._

I nod, tilting my wings just the slightest bit and gliding over to my snare, stopping almost gracefully. Repeating from earlier, I cut down and kill my catch and fly up to the cave. I prepare and roast it, and when it's done I rip the meat off with my teeth and fall asleep with my stomach fuller that it's ever been in this body.

The next day Astor shows me more, and after lunch he leaves to do something, but he refuses to tell me what. Since my teacher is gone, I decide to do a little cleaning up and then go for a swim. I toss the charcoal and bones down to the base of the cliff, and then sweep the sand into a natural looking pattern with some wind from my wings. Satisfied that my new home is tidy, I leap from the cliff and glide to where I think the water is deep enough for a dive.

Tucking my wings in tightly, I angle myself downwards with arms pointed over my head. The water envelops me, and I shoot down almost to the bottom before I can turn around and head for the surface. I swim for most of the afternoon and look up at one point to see two rather large hawks enter my cave. Climbing out of the water, I leap as high as I can before starting to flap.

I rise up to wheel with a few of my hawk friends, greeting them as a group. _Hi guys!_ A chorus of greetings fills my mind, and I dance in the air with them for a minute or so before remembering my question. Most of them don't understand much human speech, so I have to use words that they know. _Hey, who's in my nest?_

Havoc, an adult male with a dark stripe on his shoulders, answers me. _Strangers, not our flock._

The simple yet jumbled words take a moment to decipher, and I brush him in passing with my left wing, a silent thank-you. Gliding down, I land smoothly on top of the cliff and fold in my wings, walking down the ledge to meet whoever entered my cave. _Hello? What are your names?_ My eyes take a moment to adjust from the harsh sunlight, but in that moment, I realize that the things in my home aren't birds.

I focus on the two children in the back of my home, a pale skinned boy crouching protectively in front of a smaller, brown skinned girl, who has a bag of dried apricots in her hands. Crossing my arms across my skinny chest and making my voice as authoritative as I can, I ask them the first, most important question. "Who are you?" The girl seems to be paralyzed, and the boy just glares at me silently, shifting into a defensive stance. "I said, **who are you**_?_ And why are you here?"

The boy is getting ready to strike. "I could ask you the same thing, Goldilocks." Before I can answer, he springs at me, and I leap backwards, doing a twisting flip, but the boy lands on me before I can open my wings, and I sink like a stone. I angle myself down at the lake and let myself just fall. "Holy crap! Look out, kid!" His weight disappears and I snap open my wings, pulling out of my dive just above the water.

I execute a partial loop and streak back to my cave, screeching to a halt just barely in front of the girl. Looking as threatening as I can, I snarl at her. "I am **never **going back to that hell hole. You hear me? **Never**."

She looks confused, "You mean the School? I thought you were **from **there trying to catch **us**!"

I shake my head, now quite thoroughly lost. "I think we're both a bit out of the loop. I'll tell you my name as long as you tell me yours, and the crazy's. I'm Ed."

She nods, "I'm Nudge, he's Fang. We're human/avian recombinants from the School and we're going back there to free our little sister, Angel. Have you ever been in a cloud? I was wondering about that earlier when we were flying here. What's it like-"

The black haired boy skids in, sending up a spray of sand. "Nudge!"

She looks up, her monologue interrupted. "Fang!" She jumps up and hugs him, "Ed is really nice! He's running away from the School too!"

Fang glances at me, his face blank and expressionless, "Really? How long ago did you get out?"

"Just a few days."

"Did you see a chopper come in, with a little blonde girl?" I shake my head no, and he kicks the wall. "Nudge, finish eating, we're going to sleep somewhere else."

I grab her arm, already thinking of her as a friend. "No! Please, stay here. It's been a bit lonely."

Her friend seems to consider my offer, and she widens her eyes to make a pleading face impossible to say no to. "Oh **pleeeease **Fang? Can't we please stay? Ed's really nice!"

Her friend, Fang, nods. "Fine."

I hold out a hand to him, "Sorry for that dive."

He smacks it lightly away, "I'm sorry for attacking you."

"I'd have done the same, growing up in a cage does things to you." He smiles, and as they finish their dinner I throw myself over the edge, swooping up to glide with my friends. _Hi!_ They greet me again, and Havoc bangs my head with one wing, meaning **'**I was worried**'**. _Thanks Havoc._

_You smell like them._ I roll my eyes and fly up, wondering where Astor is.

Closing my eyes, I float on the breeze effortlessly for the longest time before the crazy, Fang, calls out below me "Come on! Try it! You'll fly better!"

"Hey Ed!" I look down and see the pretty girl, Nudge, flying up to meet me. "Hey Ed! Can I fly with you?" I nod and tilt my wings minutely, moving over for her. "Thanks. It's so pretty up here. And I love flying. I mean, all those kids on the ground have school and homework and stuff and we're just free up here!"

_Hello? Nudge?_

"Ed? Is that you?"

_Yep, it's me._

"How did you do that?"

_I don't know. I've been calling it a mind link; it's like a special ability for me._

"Can you…"

I gesture at her. _Use the mind link; you're scaring my flock._

_Oh, well that's weird. He's like Angel. But how can he do that? And how's he so **muscled** for someone fresh out of **there**? Wow, he's…_

I snigger. _I can hear you thinking you know._

She blushes tomato red, _Oh, oops. So can you hear me?_

I nod. _Yep, loud and clear._

_Wow, so can you do this with just, anybody?_

I shrug, not the easiest thing to do while flying. _Dunno. You're the first human I've tried it on._

_Maybe you could try it on Fang. I think he'll like to know about this. _A plan is forming in my head, and I smirk evilly. _Ed? Why are you smiling like that?_

_Hold on, I'm going to try to connect to him. He probably won't be able to hear you, so I'm thinking..._ Instead of explaining it to her, I send a string of mental images that illustrate my plan.

_I don't know… It might not work… _Smirking, I stretch out a mental thread to the crazy below and break into his head. _Ed? Don't scare him **too** bad._

I smile widely, then make my face perfectly smooth and look straight ahead, flying on auto. _Fang… Fang… Fang…_

I can feel his confusion. _Who's there? Hello? Who are you?_

In reply I send him some memories from my Amestrian life, and he crumples under the onslaught of information. "Fang!" Nudge looks at me, "Ed, stop it! He'll die!" Nudge's shouting breaks my concentration, and the link to Fang shatters. "Fang! Fang!" The boy's wings snap back open, and he slows down enough that he's not killed on impact. "Fang!"

Nudge dives down, landing gracefully right by her friend's head. "Nudge? Is he alright?" I dive, pulling up just in time to avoid a messy splatter landing. "Uhm, Crazy? Fang? Hello? Are you alright?" I look at Nudge's worried face in the fading light, "Help me carry him up to the cave." She nods, and we laboriously carry the unconscious boy up to our little home. "I'm going to make a new mental link; I dumped a boatload of memories on him." She nods, and I once again dive into her friend's head.

In there it's chaos of memories, **my** memories. I seem to walk through them, and find Fang caught in the very worst one. Pulling out, I tell Nudge the news. "He's caught in one of my memories."

"I know I'm begging for a jinx, but tell me, which one?"

I sigh loudly, "The very worst. He's caught in October 3rd."

Her brow furrows in confusion, "What happened on October 3rd?"

I shudder, that was the day we tried to bring her back, the day we committed the taboo. It's best if Nudge doesn't know about that. "The very worst day of my life." The memory flashes through my head, and I push it back, looking at Nudge, whose face suddenly seems very familiar. "I'm going to try and pull out the memories, if everything goes right, he should be ok."

Diving in again, I steel myself and start netting the memories, putting them back in my own head. The process takes a long time, but it gets done. Before I pull out though, I look around at his memories, my eyes affixing on one still frame of Nudge, hair hanging in two limp curtains around her face. I leap out of there as if it's poison; and crash back into myself panting as if I've just run a marathon. I take several deep breaths, calming myself enough to lie down and fall asleep next to my new friends. As I drift off, I find myself focusing on one fact that I just discovered. **Nudge is Rose**.

* * *

**The more Reviews/Faves/Alerts I get, the faster I'll type! Look! there's the button right there! Doesn't it look so cute and lonely and _clickable_?**


	5. Chapter 5

**Heyals! *takes a moldy cheese to the face*  
****Stop throwing things! I can't write if I'm dodging rotten food every other second!  
Now, where were we?  
*Sees angry mob*  
Ah, right, apologies. I am truly sorry that it's been so long since my last post.  
You see, about five new plot bunnies have been demanding my attention, and  
between them, not getting home until after the internet shuts down, and my  
copy of Word going into read-only, I haven't had much time to type.  
So, yeah. Sorry for the long siesta. But more updates are coming!  
Now the disclaimers...**

**1-If I owned FMA, the final picture collage would have _definite_ LingFan and Royai! _THEY EXIST!_  
2-Maximum Ride, I OWN IT! Kidding, I just wish.  
3-I would like to thank all reviewers. And people who added this to their faves/alerts list(s)**

* * *

**Ch-5**  
I turn over restlessly, opening my eyes just a tiny slit to see Nudge/Rose peacefully curled up on her side, smiling slightly. Fang is nowhere to be seen, so I get to my feet and step carefully around Nudge to fling myself out into the air. My wings fly open and I coast up to where Fang is, "Morning, Fang."

"Morning, Shrimp."

I snap, "**WHO'S SO SMALL YOU CAN'T SEE HIM WITH A MICROSCOPE!**" My kicks and punches are off balance without solid ground beneath me, so Fang is able to escape relatively unharmed.

"Cool it kid! I didn't say that!" Steaming, I give him a good hard kick in the ribs before ignoring him and just enjoying the fresh morning air. Nudge glides up to coast by us, and Fang nods at her. "Morning."

"I'm hungry."

"Town about three minutes away. Follow me." I glide along with them, "Ed, we'll get you some clothes."

"Thanks."

We pass over a camp with a clothesline, and swoop down to grab some kids clothes. "What size are you?"

"Not sure." I grab a shirt, jacket, and jeans that look my size, and a belt for good measure.

We fly off, and Fang dips his head at a fast food place below us, where a worker is tossing boxes of food out into the dumpster, getting ready for the new day. We circle a few times to make sure the worker isn't coming out again, then dive, wings tucked in, with only the feather tips guiding us. Thirty feet or so above our target, we blow open our wings and brake before landing, almost silently, on the edge of the metal bin. Fang pulls the box over and starts pawing through it, "Nirvana. Burger?"

Nudge shakes her head, "I don't know, after watching the hawks shredding little animals—oh, but look, here's a couple salads. And some apple pies! Bonus! Oh, Ed, you want some?"

I freeze in the act of picking up a burger, reminding myself. _She doesn't know, there's no way she could possibly know about that._ Looking at her, I smile weakly. "No, thanks."

"Oh, hey, here's some fish strips! Want these?" I nod numbly, taking them and stuffing them down my jacket, following Nudge's example.

We fly back to the cave and eat quickly, it's amazing how much better a decent breakfast can make you feel, even if that breakfast is comprised of day old fast food. Fang finishes off his fifth burger patty and wipes his fingers on his jeans. "You know, I think the way they swoop and stuff is like a message to other hawks. Like they're telling them where there's game or where they'll be or something. I haven't figured it out yet, but I will."

"They're talking to each other alright, see Havoc over there?" I point at my friend, "He's telling Solaris that he wants to hunt with her in the canyon." Fang and Nudge look at me, "Hey, I can talk to them. I know their non-verbal words too."

Stretching out my wings, I sit on the ledge outside and tilt my face to the sun, enjoying the warmth. My thoughts wander to Ari, is he ok? Does he know I tried to save him? Does he, does he hate me? My musings are interrupted by Nudge's quiet voice, "Fang? We've just got to go find Max. Or should we go on and try to find Angel?"

Fang sighs, "We're going to circle back, look for Max. She must have—run into something." I stand up, looking into the cave at Nudge and Fang. "You ready?"

Nudge hops up, brushing sand off the seat of her pants. "Absolutely, um, where do you think we should—" But Fang is already off, being carried by the rising canyon air.

"We should probably follow him."

She nods, jumping after him "Tarzan!"

I chuckle, leaping after her. "What's that supposed to mean?"

I can't see her face, but I know she smiles. "No idea! You?"

"Nope!"

We laugh, and it feels good. I can't remember the last time I've been able to laugh like this, carefree and relaxed. Being with her is, almost like being with Winry. We fly side by side behind Fang, and out of the corner of my eye I look at her, seeing the clear resemblance between her and Rose. "Fang? Do you remember where we left Max?"

"Yes."

"Are we going to go there?"

He takes a moment to respond, "Not if we can help it."

Nudge seems torn, "But why? Maybe Max is hurt and needs help. Maybe we need to save her before we can go save Angel."

Is Max another one of their friends? And if so, why isn't she with these two? Fang turns left, and Nudge and I follow him over the baked landscape.

Fang speaks to us slowly, as if he's weighing each word. "I don't think Max would have gotten hurt all by herself. She's not going to fly into a tree or crash-land. So if she's late because she's hurt, it probably means that someone, a person, hurt her. Which means that someone knows about her. We don't want that someone to know about us too. Which they would if we went to where Max is." Nudge's jaw drops in shock, whoever this Max girl is, she must mean a lot to her. "And if Max is late because she's busy, then our going to her won't speed things up—she'll come when she's good and ready. So for right now, we do a general look-see. But we're not going all the way back."

Nudge opens her mouth as if she's about to say something, then closes it without a word. I see her glance subtly at Fang, and then she starts to cry. Oh god, I can't bear it when girls cry. "Nudge? Nudge, what's wrong?"

She sniffles, wiping away tears. "I just miss Max." I nod, since I'm not even sure who Max is, I can't comfort her. And it's not physically possible to hug her while we're flying, not unless we both want to fall out of the sky. She focuses on a truck below, and I watch her track it with her eyes until it reaches an intersection. I don't bother to read the signs, knowing that I won't know any of the places anyway, but Nudge apparently knows one of them, because she shouts out, "Fang! It's Tipisco, down below! I'm going there!"

I deliberate for a moment, the follow down after her, I'd much rather be alone with her than Fang, who I still think of as a little bit crazy. "No way Nudge. Ed! Don't get sidetracked now. You two stay with me."

"No!" She screams as I follow her into a dive, "I have to go find my parents! If Max is gone, I'm going to need someone."

"Nudge, you have me." But my voice is quiet, and I'm not sure she hears me over Fang yelling at us.

"No! I'm going down—and you can't stop me!"

I follow her as closely as I can, ignoring Fang calling out behind us. "Nudge, if you don't find them, you've always got me."

She smiles weakly, tears still leaking from her eyes. "Thanks Ed."

"Nudge, for the last time, give this up. This is a bad idea, a terrible idea."

I scowl over my shoulder at Fang, wondering why he's even still with us. If he's so opposed to this plan, why is he tagging along? "Hey, Crazy! Shut up!"

He scowls back at me, and after a few threats of leaving us retreats into a surly silence. Soaring on, we reach a trailer park with meandering lanes marked more often than not with rickety wooden signs. "Come on, I see Chaparral Court." I hadn't even realized that Fang was next to us, that's how silently he flies. We snake through discarded appliances and car skeletons and plants that I think are bloodberry and jack's thorn, but can't be sure of. We stop behind a car skeleton by number 4625, and as Nudge and Fang watch the trailer home intently, I walk into the under brush. I'm not sure what I'm looking for exactly, maybe a berry bush or something, but I just wander for several minutes before stopping at a tree and slamming my head against it, "Ugh. Stupid. There won't be any berries here, its too **dry**."

Somebody behind me chuckles, a low, dry, evil, **melodious** chuckle. "Hey Freak." I whirl around, slamming my hands together almost instinctively. The Eraser in front of me is fully morphed, and his knife-like teeth look extra huge. "Silly Freak. What's that gonna do?"

The Eraser lunges at me, and as I run I realize that if there's one, there are probably more. "Nudge!" The screaming of another Eraser somewhere ahead and to the left drowns out my cry, "Shit."

The Eraser chasing me chuckles, crashing through the bushes with ease. "Here piggy piggy! Little piggy doesn't sta—"

He's interrupted mid word by my left foot filling his mouth, "**WHO'S AN ULTRA SMALL SHRIMP!**" My flying kick catches him off guard, and the momentum sends us crashing to the ground. Enraged at his comment, I kick his head viciously, and repeatedly. There's a sickening snap, and his head lolls to the side. "Oh my god." I didn't mean to **kill** him; I have a kind of policy against killing people, even when they're trying to kill **me**. I prefer to maim to the extent that they're no longer a threat.

On the verge of complete panic, I force myself to take off in the direction of the trailer park. Bursting out of the woods, I leap as high as I can and flap hard, gaining altitude and heading for Nudge. _Nudge!_

_Ed! Fang needs help!_

I spot Fang on the ground, getting the crap beat out of him by two Erasers; and the empty spray cans lying on the ground nearby; maybe they're not empty. _Nudge! Grab a spray can!_ She nods, dropping down to grab one, then popping right back up, out of reach. Snarling, I drop onto the head of one of the Erasers and start distracting him from Fang. Namely by beating the crap out of him.

A few punches later, Nudge drops down and sprays the other Eraser in the eyes, tossing the can to me after just a few seconds. "Ed! Catch!"

I snag the can and spray my opponent until it runs out. Using him as a springboard, I get back into the air with Nudge and Fang. A somewhat hoarse voice comes from below us, "Ed?"

I look down at the green haired Eraser, who is staring up at me in shock. Why is he scowling like... "Ed!"

"Ari? Ari!" A smile splits my face, he's alive! They didn't kill him!

His scowl deepens, "You're with **them**?"

"Yeah, what does that matter?"

His voice is unmistakably bitter. "I hate them! And I hate you too! You left me!"

The words 'I hate you' hit me like a punch to the gut, and its all I can do to remain airborne. "Al... no... it's not like that... I tried..."

His eyes are streaming with tears of rage. "No you didn't! You left me! It's your fault I'm stuck in this awful body!" He fumbles in his jacket for a moment before pulling out a gun, "This is all your fault!"

"Al, please..."

Fang rockets away, but my world has stopped. He hates me? Al hates me? No, he's Ari. But, he looks so much like Al!

I'm pulled to the side, and something whistles past my ear. "Ed! We've got to get out of here!" Nudge begins to tow me, and I numbly follow, her hand in mine the only thing keeping me moving.

I can feel the tears streaming down my face, "He's not Al. He's not Al. He's not Al." _But he's close enough. Close enough to make you cry by saying he hates you. Close enough to confirm your fear. _"Shut up! Shut up shut up **shut up**!" Nudge guides me to a darker, cooler spot and touches my feet to the ground, where I collapse, wings still out, tears pouring down my face.

Nudge wraps one arm comfortingly around my shoulders, and I lean on her, actually shaking with the force of my sobs. "Ed, it's alright. Ari hates all of us. And he's not Al, whoever that is. It's all right. Everything's fine."

I'm not sure how long it takes, but eventually I run out of tears. Firming my resolve, I put all my brotherly feelings for Ari in a box and lock it tight. I **will** survive; I'm not going to let myself break down again, because now there's no one to fix me back up. I left her behind in Amestris.

"Ed?"

I wipe at the salty tear tracks on my face with the back of one dirty hand, "Yeah Nudge?"

"Where's Amestris?"

I freeze up instantly, how the hell does she know about that? Oh crap, I must have said that out loud. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Yeah! Of course I can!"

I turn ninety degrees and take her hands in mine, "Amestris is the place I'm from, it's… in another dimension."

She blinks, "Really? Is that where you learned to fight like that?"

I stare blankly at her, "You believe me?"

She smiles back, "Why wouldn't I? It sounds a little crazy, but hey, we've got **wings**."

I laugh, "Just don't tell Fang, okay?" She nods, and we just sit there in silence examining the rocks, holding hands until Fang returns.

He lands almost silently on the ledge, familiar dark eyes doing a quick sweep. "Hey Ed, you're feeling better now?"

"Yeah." I've got no desire to explain in depth my breakdown earlier.

"Can I interest either of you in a bit of raw desert rat?"

"Eeew, no!" We exclaim in unison, and in reply he pops something in his mouth, chewing and swallowing loudly.

"Can't get any fresher." We make eeew faces at each other, no way would I eat a rat **raw**. Cooked, probably. But never raw, never ever. He pulls out and starts to open a foil package, "Ok then, how about some kabobs? Nudge gets the veggies."

We share a grin, "Yes!"

"**Kabobs!**" Nudge exlaims, "Where did you get them? You didn't have time to go all the way to town. Oh my gosh they're still hot."

"Let's just say some campers are going to be a little surprised."

He hands me one of the sticks, and I peel off most of the vegetables, holding them out to Nudge. "Here ya go."

"Thanks Ed! Here, you can have the meat off of mine." She hands me all the meat from her stick, and I pop it in my mouth, barely chewing at all before swallowing. She bites into one of the peppers I handed her, closing her eyes. "Now **this** is food."

"So I guess we have to decide whether to keep looking for Max or go try to save Angel."

Fang bites into his kabob, and Nudge seems to find this the time to voice her thoughts. "But the Erasers said everyone else was dead." I didn't know that, "Doesn't that mean Angel and Max too?" I can practically **see** the sadness settle back down on her, and for some reason it makes me want to pound those Erasers into dust. Well, more than I already did.

"No way to tell," Fang says. "The thing is, if Max isn't here, is it because she's dead? How would they have found her? Angel..." He pauses, and I think it's because he's sad. "Well, we **knew** they had Angel. That's probably all over with by now."

Nudge drops her head into her hands, as if it's too heavy to hold up anymore. "I can't think about it."

"I know, but what are your—" He stops, squinting off into the distance. I follow his line of sight, and vaguely see two dark splotches, just two more hawks. We finish eating, and Nudge licks the foil. Fang keeps looking out at the sky, more specifically, at the two dark splotches. They're much closer now, and much bigger, they must be **really** big hawks, or eagles, or flying Erasers. As Fang flashes a metal mirror at them, I try for a quick mental link.

"They're not birds."

Nudge looks at me, "Are they Erasers?"

"I don't think so, if they were. Fang probably wouldn't be signaling them."

Her jaw drops when the two blobs become recognizable as people, and about half a minute later two vaguely familiar looking boys land clumsily on the ledge, sending rocks and dust everywhere. "You aren't **dead**." Nudge gawks in astonishment.

The taller one responds irritably, "No. You aren't dead either. How about just 'hello'?"

The shorter one brushes dust out of his hair, "Hi guys. We couldn't stay home—there's Erasers all over the mountain. So we decided to come here. Anybody got a problem with that?"

Nudge is smiling from ear to ear, "Of course not!"

They walk in further, and I tilt my head to one side, working hard to form a link. Finally breaking through, I send them a message. _Hello, what are your names? _They leap backwards, and I'm glad that they walked in from the ledge. Grinning like an idiot, I wave innocently at them. "Hi!"

The taller one looks around for a moment before actually facing me, "Who are you? And how did you get in my head?" I smile, refusing to answer his question. "Nudge, please tell me **who **this person is, and **what** they're doing."

I frown, can't he see me? Then I realize that he **can't,** that his eyes are blank and unfocused. _Did the scientists at the School do this to you?_

He hisses, literally, **hisses** at me. "How are you doing that? Who are you?"

"I'm Edward Elric." Now I know where I've seen them before! They're duplicates of Russell and Fletcher Tringham, whose father made the news with some big breakthrough in agricultural alchemy a few years ago back home.

The Russell copy scowls at me, _GET OUT OF MY HEAD!_

I fall on my butt scrambling backwards, and the Fletcher clone cracks up. Nudge laughs a little, offering a hand to help me up. "The tall one is Iggy, the shorter one is the Gasman, Gazzy for short."

I open my mouth, but the Russell copy, now named Iggy, cuts me off. "Don't ask, just stay upwind."

The newly named Gazzy chuckles evilly, and Fang holds out his left hand. Nudge and the other two, Iggy and Gazzy, stack their fists immediately, and Nudge puts my hand in the stack. They tap the backs of each other's fists, and I do likewise. Then we all find spots to sleep. I lie down next to Nudge. _What was that whole fist-tapping thing about?_

She smiles, resting her head on her dusty, chocolate colored arms. _It's just a thing we do, every single night, wherever we are._

I rest my head on my own folded arms. _Like reading a story?_

She smiles, and for some reason it makes me want to smile as well. _I guess. But it's a habit by now._ I smile back at her, and then turn over onto my side so that my back is to her. Placing my hands together gently, I press them to the floor. So far alchemy hasn't worked in the world, but if it becomes possible someday, I'll want to know. And if they've got a bedtime habit, then this will be mine.

* * *

**Okay, I really am sorry that It's been so long since my last post,**


	6. Chapter 6

**1-If I owned FMA, I would be drawing these fics instead of just writing them.  
2-Maximum Ride, I OWN IT! Kidding, I just wish.**

**A/N:Oh my god I'm really so sorry it's been so long since my last update. Life has been happening and I got obsessed with Hetalia and... Yeah. But hey, HARRY POTTER 7 PART 2! It's coming out tonight. And guess what? I'M GOING TO THE MIDNIGHT SHOWING! WOOT! WOOT! WOOOOOT!**

**So yeah, this AN is getting long and I'm gonna just let you read now but you still have to know a slight change has been made. Ed is now the same age as Nudge instead of a year older than Iggy+Max+Fang. But I will not be going back to fix it. I'm sorry for any confusion this may have caused, but I needed more time for the 5th Ed Ride.  
**

* * *

**Ch-6**

I'm swooping and soaring with the hawks, some distance away from the others, when somebody comes up beneath them, a somebody with wings. With my raptor vision, I see Nudge and Gazzy smile like the little kids they are, and I can see Fang nod his head towards our cave, which I've come to think of as my home. Nudge seems to be ecstatic at this new visitor, because she squeals "Max! Max! I can't believe it! _Can_ I believe it?" They glide in one after the other, and I give them a moment before silently gliding down to land noiselessly on the ledge, intent on eavesdropping.

Nudge is first to speak, as usual. "Max! We were so worried—I didn't know what had happened to you, and we didn't know what to do, and Fang said we were going to eat rats, and—"

Then an unfamiliar voice, presumably this 'Max' speaks. "Okay, okay. Everything's okay. I'm just so glad to see you safe." There's a slight pause before the newcomer speaks again. "What are **you two **doing here? Why didn't you stay home?"

Gazzy starts into his explanation earnestly, "We couldn't, there were Erasers all over the mountain. They were hunting for us. We'd be dog meat by now."

"When did they start hunting for you? Right after we left?" The newcomer, Max, sounds startled.

Gazzy's voice is low as he responds; he's probably examining his shoes. "No."

The new girl, Max, sounds suspicious now, "What? When did they start coming after you?"

I bite back a chuckle at the sound of Gazzy's voice so hesitant. "Was it—was it after the oil slick Hummer crash?"

I direct a thought at him. _**I**__ think it was the bomb._

Gazzy speaks again, and I swear I can **feel** the tension in that cave. "Or maybe it was more—after the bomb."

"I think it was the bomb." Iggy agrees, "That definitely seemed to tick them off."

'Max' sounds incredulous, "Bomb? **Bomb? **You guys set off a **bomb**? Didn't that tell the Erasers exactly where you were? You should have stayed hidden!"

"They already knew where we were." Gazzy explains, "They'd seen all of us—they knew we were in the area."

"It was only a matter of time." Iggy agrees.

"Well, I'm glad you're safe." This lame answer is accompanied by smothered laughter from, of all people, Fang. "You were right to come here. Smart thinking. Excellent." There's another, longer, pause, and I hear the sounds of rustling fabric, so I assume that this 'Max' girl is hugging people. "It's okay, sweetie."

After her soft words, I think it's time to introduce myself. _Max? Hello, Max._ I step around the corner and snigger at the look on her face, shooting Gazzy a conspirational glance. _I'm Ed._

She steps back a bit, automatically assessing my threat level. "Get out of my head, **now**."

Her voice is a menacing snarl, but I shrug it off. I've been faced with **much** worse than an angry teenage bird girl. "Suit yourself." I walk casually over to stand by Nudge, and Max's eyes narrow slightly, giving away her suspicion. "Cool it, I'm not gonna hurt her." _I'd __**never**__ hurt her._

"Who are you, how do you know my name, and why are you here?"

I smile, falling to sit cross-legged on the floor. "One, I'm Edward Elric, Ed for short. Two, I've been hanging out with your friends for the past two days, and Nudge told me a little bit about you. And three, I'm here because I ran away from The School."

If she was tense before, now she's about to snap. She skitters backwards until her back hits the wall, "Leave, **now**."

I smirk, crossing my arms. _**No.**_ She scowls, and steps threateningly towards me. If I had been anyone else, I'd have turned tail and run long ago. But I'm not just anyone, I'm the Fullmetal Alchemist. I won't be intimidated by a bird girl.

Then Nudge, who has been next to me this whole time, steps in front of me. "No, Max."

She pulls up short, looking from Nudge's determined face to mine, then sighs. "Fine, but he's not coming with us."

I open up a link with Nudge. _Ed, ignore her. You're coming with._

I smile a little. _I know._

Then we all stack our fists and tap the back of each person's hand twice. "To Angel!"

We echo her, and I make my cry blend into Iggy and Gazzy's. "To Angel!"

I watch the others fall off the cliff and snap open their wings, and a minute or so later, I follow them. I fly forward quickly to soar next to my two new friends, Iggy and Gazzy, and open up a mind link. _Don't tell her I'm here just yet._

I get two nods, and listen to Max's achingly familiar voice. "Okay, how about some quick reports?"

"I tried to find my mom."

Max's eyes go wide, "Whaaat? Your **mom?**"

Nudge shrugs, something she taught me to do in mid-air, "Me and Ed made Fang go down to Tipisco while we were waiting for you. We found the right address. I saw a woman, and she was kind of my color, but I wasn't sure. Then the Erasers, including Ari, showed up. So we kicked butt and left."

Max stays quiet for a minute, and I scan her thoughts, picking up lots of confusion and excitement, as well as shock, curiosity, and even a little bit of... pity? "So you didn't talk to her? Umm, your mom?"

"No." Nudge mutters, staring blankly at her fingernails.

"Did she look nice?" Max ventures, and I feel Nudge's mind reach out to me for support.

"I'll tell you about it later." Nudge tries for an offhand tone, but doesn't quite manage it.

Max kindly directs her attention at Iggy and Gazzy as Nudge drops back next to me, "We know what **you**'ve been up to." She glares at the two boys, and Gazzy gives her a sweet, abashed smile that's totally fake. That kid is a born trouble maker. Max inhales deeply, and I sense the words in her head just moments before they come out of her mouth. "I think I have a tracer chip implanted in me." She tilts her wings to catch a current, "I'm not positive, but it showed up on an X-ray, and that's what it looked like."

Gazzy nearly falls out of the sky, and Iggy's mouth falls open while Nudge makes a startled noise and covers her mouth. But Fang just raises his eyebrows a little, "You had an X-ray?"

Max nods, "Details later. If I do have this chip, it explains all the erasers everywhere. But not why it's taken them four years to hunt us down. And I don't know if any of you have one."

"We all lived there, they probably put those things in all of us, I know they put one in me. For all we know we've each got one, maybe they're all transmitting right now and they're just toying with us. Maybe those bastards at the School are just playing one great big game, and we're the pieces."

Max looks at me, surprised . That's probably the most I've ever said in front of her. For a few minutes after that nobody speaks. Then Gazzy breaks the silence, "Max, do you think there's still a chance?" I pick up worry from the small blond, the girl we're going to rescue is his little sister. The poor kid doesn't even know if his baby sister is still alive, and he's tearing himself apart with worry. _Ed, I know you're there. Do you think she's alright?_

_I don't know. Life back there was pretty rough. _The little kid blinks, then hastily wipes away tears. _Is she as tough as you are?_ I ask him silently, tilting my wings to fly a tight circle, just for the fun of it.

_I think she is._ Gazzy thinks back at me, trying to look stoic.

_If she's as tough as you are, then she'll be alive. I don't know what they're doing to her, but I can assure you, she's alive._ Gazzy looks back at me and flashes a small smile, and after that we just fly on in silence for a while.

I hang back a few yards from the rest of them while Fang and Nudge talk to Max. Then they start handing out foil wrapped sticks, and Nudge drops back next to me. "Hungry?" She asks, holding out three of the bars.

"Starving." I reply, ripping open the package and practically swallowing them whole. Some miles later, I feel Solaris's small hawk-mind reach out to me. _Not our home, must leave now. Come, fledgling._ With a start I realize that I'm leaving behind the birds that have been my flock, my **family**, for the past week. I have to leave them behind if I want to stay with this small band of familiar strangers. Gritting my teeth for just a moment, I send a thought out to my avian siblings. _I'm leaving. I probably won't be back. Goodbye._

Their minds all cry out to me at once, but I pull up a wall so thick and tall and strong that I can no longer hear them. Most of the Flock don't notice my reaction when the great raptors peel off, but Nudge's eyes remain on me the whole time. "Ed."

I breathe deeply, filling my lungs and air sacs to the brim. "I'm fine, Nudge."

She beats her wings in rhythm with mine and angles closer so that she can brush my shoulder with her fingertips. "I don't think so. You're missing them already, aren't you?"

I sense her presence in my head and near-reflexively throw up a wall, leaving my mind silent but for the sound of my thoughts and Birdie's breathing in his sealed room. The shock of being so brutally booted from my head shocks her into pulling her hand away, and the silence between us is stony until Max directs us to land in the woods near a solitary strip mall.

"Okay," She says, rubbing her shoulder, "we need food. And a street map wouldn't be the worst idea in the world."

I can sense Fang rolling his eyes in his head, "The School won't show up on any street map."

"I know. But we know pretty much where it is—there'll be a blank space on the map, but it will still help us find roads to get there." a short hike brings us to the back of the mall, a decent sized place with a gas station, a dry cleaner's, a hair salon, and what I pick up from Gazzy is an ATM.

"Need to get your hair done?" Fang whispers to Max, who responds with an irritated elbow to his gut.

"Well, what now? Should we keep going?" Gazzy asks, looking to Max for leadership, for answers.

"Let me think." She mutters, waving him off. I watch unobtrusively as she rejects two of the options, and groan quietly when she settles on walking. "Okay," She says, readying to deliver the news to the others. "Looks like we'll have to—" she's abruptly cut off by an expensive looking grey car screeching into the lot and jolting to a stop in front of the ATM. The window rolls down, and the man who leans out pulls forth a memory of Dublith and a bar called The Devil's Nest.

"Greed, we meet again." I breath, hand fisting around a branch as I remember why I met him in the first place.

"Shut up you idiot!" Greed yells into the cell phone jammed against his ear, "If you hadn't lost your card I wouldn't need cash!"

Nudge's mind tentatively reaches out to mine with a question, _You know him?_

I bite the inside of my cheek, and think back. _Not this one, but in my world he kidnapped my little brother Ari._ I blink at my mix up, giving my head a quick shake. _Not Ari, Al. His name's Al._

Greed slides a plastic card into the machine and punches in a string of numbers. _Credit card,_ Nudge's brain supplies.

"That's what I get for trusting you with anything!" He spits into the phone, "You can't handle getting dressed in the morning!"

_Jerk._ Nudge thinks to me.

_The original was worse._ I think back as the machine spits out green bills like magic. Greed, like his former self, snatches up the cash and begins counting. As he leafs through the money, a black pickup careens into the lot. It passes close to Greed's car, and the spinning wheels spit out gravel that pings against the shiny paint job.

We shrink back into the woods together without command, the pickup practically **oozing **evil even as Greed leans out the window further to shriek at them.

"He's going to go ballistic." Fang predicts in a whisper as the veins in Greed's neck bulge like something out of a cartoon.

"You fucking whores! Look what you damn assholes did to my car, cocksuckers! You'll be paying for the new paint job, fucking bitches!"

Max's eyebrows jump slightly at the sheer number of swears, and I stifle a smirk as she tucks some of them away for future use.

The black car's darkened window rolls down and my breathing stops for a moment when Ari leans out the window, creepy smile further twisting his bizarrely stretched seven year old face. "What'd you say, dip stick?"

Max's hand clamps down on Gazzy's shoulder, calming him only a fraction as she mutters "Shhh, shhh."

Greed's eyes bug out almost comically, and in under a second his head is back in his car and the gas pedal has been stomped, causing the car to leap forward. My once-sweet little brother laughs like a deranged maniac, and his car pulls out too, spraying pebbles. Five heartbeats later the noise of engines is barely an echo, and I feel again the wrenching pain that comes with seeing Ari.

"Was Ari's hair **green**?" Max asks, turning to look at Nudge.

"Yep." we answer together.

Max glares at me, her words coming out in a menacing hiss. "I said you weren't coming!"

I shrug nonchalantly, half smirk firmly in place. "Too bad, I came."

She fumes silently for a moment, much to my amusement. Her buttons are just too easy to push, it's hardly any fun. "Alright, you can stay."

Nudge and I share wide, childlike smiles as Max leads the way out into the parking lot. Nudge and I slip low across the asphalt with the rest of them and come to the ATM which says, in bright orange letters, **Please enter the amount you wish to withdraw.**

In her head, I see Max balanced on the edge of a moral dilemma. "Sixty dollars? That would buy a lot of food, right?"

"He's a jerk, take him for all he's worth." I say, surprising even myself. _Well,_ I think to myself, _Greed definitely deserves it after all he's done._

And, surprising me again, Max shoots me a smile. "You might not be so bad, little evil dude."

"**WHO'S SO TINY HIS WINGS ARE AS SMALL AS A BUMBLEBEE'S?**" I scream, temper boiling over.

Max jumps about five feet, whirling around to fully face me with a quick snap kick aimed at my head. With reflexes honed by training under Teacher I catch her foot and spin it so she lands on her back. When she tries to get up, I let her. But when she tries to attack me again I simply block her blows, "Do you really want this fight?" I whisper when she punches at my head, missing by an inch and allowing me to trap her arm neatly.

Her blows after that are less ferocious, and after what couldn't possibly be more than a minute she drops from a deflected spinning kick to turning back towards the ATM. "Right, now. Back to the mission."

The rest of the bird kids stare openly at me as Max works her way through pages that I don't understand, finally finding what I assume to be the total money in the account. Max's wolf whistle draws the attention of us all, and Nudge peeps over her shoulder. Catching sight of the 8 digit number, she spontaneously begins to do a little happy dance. "Oh yea-ah, oh yea-ah, we're ri-ich, we're gonna buy a ca-ar, oh yea-ah!"

Her unbounded glee breaks the awkward silence, and all of us but Fang chuckle at her antics. After a few annoying minutes though, Max hits the side of the machine. "Stupid thing will only give us 200 bucks!" Then she punches $200 into the **Withdraw** option, and more orange letters come up. **Please input your PIN.** "Oh no. Did anyone see it?" She looks in all our faces, and blind Iggy is the one who answers.

"I, heard it." He says haltingly, wary of upsetting her after the fight he just heard.

And of course, Fang has to chip in his own cheery opinion. "I think if you put in the wrong code more than twice, the whole thing shuts down and swallows the card."

"Can you do it?" Max asks Iggy, guiding him gently by the elbow to the ATM.

He runs his fingers lightly over the keypad to orient himself to its layout, and speaks again in the same cautious tone. "Um, I'll try..."

"It's okay, Ig. Just give it your best shot." Fang says.

Iggy punches in five numbers, and we all hold our breath until the orange letters come up again. **Access Denied. Please check your PIN and try again.**

"Try again. You've got the best ears on the planet." Max says tensely. As Iggy runs over the faint button noises in his head again, Nudge grabs my hand for support. My face heats, but moments later my salvation arrives in the form of the ATM whirring and spitting out twenties. Grateful for an excuse, I shake my hand free of hers and begin grabbing cash from the slot, stuffing it into the pockets of my 'borrowed' jacket.

"Grab it and go!" Max cries excitedly as Nudge grabs the last of the paper and shoves it into the pockets of her own windbreaker.

We turn and begin to run, but halt when the ATM beeps again. Half expecting a bomb, Max turns around to see a final orange prompt. **Thank you for your business. Please take your card.**

We turn and begin to run, but halt when the ATM beeps again. Max turns back, and sees the machine spit out a plastic rectangle. "Thank **you**."

After that we bolt for the trees, snapping open our wings mere inches from their trunks and flipping sideways to dart between them. A few yards in though, we halt in the trees and fork over the cash to Fang, who counts the bills twice to make sure none were dropped. "Too bad we couldn't get more." Fang said as he counts the bills a third time. Man the guy is paranoid.

"Let's go back to the gas station and buy a bunch of food." Nudge urges, bouncing on her branch with excited energy.

Max shakes her head. "No. Too risky. People there may have already seen us, especially with that fight. We've got to get out of here."

Sometime when she was talking a red van had pulled up behind one of the stores. A young looking guy unloads a couple crates of stuff from it, and before the door swings shut properly we all see him punch a time card.

As Max holds a moral debate in her head, I reach my mind out to Nudge's. _Calm._ I try to broadcast a calm memory to her, and it seems to work because her hyper movements slow down. _Calm._ I send her the memory again, and she stills entirely.

She looks to me in wonder, and I smile slightly. Why does using my powers have to be so draining when they already have such tight restrictions? "Money from a jerk is one thing. A car from just a guy is something else."

Max's voice makes me shelve the internal question for later and return to the present, where Max and Fang are arguing. "We'd only need to borrow it for a few hours." He coaxes. "We could leave some money as a rental fee."

His tone is familiar in a distant way, but before I can put my finger on it Gazzy pipes up. "Are we stealing that car? Let's."

Max frowns. "No, we're sort of **thinking** about **borrowing** it."

"It's like Grand Theft Auto." Gazzy interjects, trying for helpful and only half reaching it. "I saw it on TV, it's popular with kids." The images in his head are confusing to me, as are the phrases tied to them. _Video games. Xbox._

I force myself to not listen to his confusing train of thoughts and instead focus on the present where Iggy is advising Max. "Better 'borrow' it soon. I hear a chopper."

Max sighs and curses in her head, and then we all drop low to scoot across the tarmac again. She opens a side door and we slide into the seats while she has Iggy get in behind the wheel and press on the gas. They pop the hood and I turn my attention to Nudge, who is bouncing on the seat next to me. "Isn't this so cool? I've never been in a real van before. Did you know the seats would be this soft? Have you ever ridden in a van before? Had they even invented cars where you came from?"

She looks at me expectantly, and I do my best to answer her questions in the proper order. "Uh, I didn't know, I haven't, and yes. But where I'm from the cars are much more boxy, and the seats aren't as soft. The same with trains, the seats are like church pews."

Nudge's eyes widen and sparkle, like Winry when we first went to Rush Valley. No, stop thinking like that. "You've been on a **train**? You've been in a **church**?" Her voice is almost reverent, and I'm glad that Iggy and Gazzy are talking about an explosive of some kind. They don't know my history yet and I'd rather like to keep it that way.

_Uh, yeah. I rode trains a lot when I was a State Alchemist. They're the quickest and easiest way to get around. And about the church, yeah. I met you in a church of the false sun God, Leto._ I shake my head at the slip up, the second one today. What's wrong with my head? _Sorry, not you. __**Rose**__. I met Rose in a church. Rose who looks like you, or, at least what you could look like in the future if you ever straighten your hair and get highlights._ I realize I'm rambling and shut up, blushing. No, why am I blushing? There's no reason I should be blushing, dammit!

Nudge laughs quietly and smiles, crossing her legs and leaning towards me. "You're blushing."

I scoot away a little, uncomfortable being so close to her. _Why?_ My brain asks. _You never had trouble being this close to Winry._

I scowl internally and snap back. _That's because I've known her forever! I've only known Nudge for a few days!_

The little voice in my head sniggers infuriatingly, and in the real world I growl quietly as Nudge pokes my cheek. "Ed? Hey, Ed. E~d. Are you okay?"

The motor kicks into life with a grumble, and I jerk out of the conversation in my head. "Wha-? Oh, uh, sorry Nudge. I was just talking with…" I trail off. Who was I arguing with? It wasn't Birdie, and it wasn't any one of the Flock. "Heh, I guess I was talking with myself."

Max shoos Iggy out of the driver's seat, then stares blankly at the controls. "Oh my god." Fang says in his usual low, quiet voice. "None of us have ever driven."

I almost say I have, but memory of narrowly missing a tree makes me decide against it. Anyway, this body is only 12 at most, the first cop to see us would have us pull over in a second.

"I've seen people drive on TV." Max says authoritatively, cracking her knuckles. "How hard could it be?" She puts the car in drive and re-settles her hands on the steering wheel in ten and two position. "Okay, guys. Here goes nothing."

She presses on the gas and nothing happens. "Well, that was anticlimactic." Fang says, and Max glares at him before turning back to the wheel.

"I can't tell what's wrong." She mutters angrily, stomping on the gas. The car inches forward, and I send her a thought. _Parking brake._

She glances around, looking for the sender, before actually feeling around for the release lever. Two minutes later she tapped the gas again and we actually rolled forward. "Okay, everyone. Seatbelts on?"

A chorus of clicks answers her, and she smiles. "Okay. Here goes nothing. For real this time." She looks over her shoulder at us. "I mean, it's not as good as flying, but it sure beats the heck out of walking!" Ten minutes of parking lot practice later she smiles bravely over at Fang, who is giving her a steady glare. "What?"

"Could you take it easy on the hairpin turns?" He says, his voice and tone striking me as familiar again but in a distant sort of way. Who was he to me in my first life?

Max sticks her tongue out at him. "I'm getting better. I just had to practice."

"I didn't know a van could go up on two wheels like that! And for so **long**." Nudge's eyes are wide again, this time whether with excitement or fear I can't tell.

"I don't want to barf in a borrowed car." Gazzy mutters, holding his stomach and looking vaguely green.

Max ignores him and focuses on the road. "We need to turn East in about five hundred yards." She mutters. Six hundred yards later she pulls over and rests her forehead against the steering wheel. "Where the heck is the road?" She yells, startling me slightly. "There's no freaking **road** here!"

"You're going by your own directional senses." Fang points out quietly.

"And there can't be roads everywhere you **feel** like there should be a road." Iggy adds in a reasonable but unhelpful tone.

In Max's aid, I lean forward and pinch Iggy's arm. "What was that for?" He yelps, rubbing the pink spots where my nails got him.

I smile sweetly. "For annoying Max. Don't screw with the lady in charge."

Max looks back at me in surprise and smiles. _Thanks_. The thought comes from her, and I blink in shock as she pulls back onto the gray ribbon and turns around to go back. "I'll just have to take a less efficient route." She says with deceptive calmness.

Some miles of driving later another unexpected turn takes us away from the School and Max pulls over again, punching the steering wheel several times and accidentally setting off the horn with most of the impacts.

"It's okay, Max." Gazzy says tentatively from the seat behind her, eyes big.

"Is she hitting the steering wheel?" Iggy asks, and I send him a mental dagger glare with the message '_not helping_'.

"Look." Fang points to a sign. "There's a town up ahead. Let's go there, get something to eat, and find an actual map. Cause this wandering thing ain't working."

Bennett, as this town happens to be called, is a small, almost cute place in the middle of nowhere. There's a parking lot with several restaurants on the edge, and Max gingerly pulls in to a spot at the very back, away from all the other cars. Way to stick out, oh inconspicuous leader.

"You know, if you park with the other cars people are less likely to notice us." I suggest, leaning forward as much as my belt will allow.

"What was that, smart mouth?" She snaps at me, tense from driving.

I look at her evenly, trying to send her calm memories like I did with Nudge. "I said, if you park with the rest of the cars we won't stick out as much."

Everybody looks at me curiously, and I send Max another wave of _calm_.

"O-kay." She says slowly, shifting out of park and giving the pedal a light tap to get us moving. Pulling in on the end of a row of family cars, closest to the exit, she cuts the engine and looks at me. "I hope you're right."

She hits the unlock button twice and Gazzy leaps out of his seat as if it were pressurized. "We're alive!" He yells, and Max opens her door to get out.

"**Wait**. Look, we're really close to the School. This may **feel** like the middle of nowhere, but really, Erasers could be anywhere and any**one**. You know that. So we have to be careful."

Nudge hops out onto the newly patched parking lot, and I follow her closely onto the pitch black rectangle. "We have to eat." She says, unable to keep the whine entirely out of her voice.

"I know, Nudge. We're going to." Max consoles. "I'm just saying be really careful. Be on guard, be ready to run, okay? **Anybody we see could be an Eraser**." We all nod in understanding, and she flips down the visor to check herself in the mirror. Something falls into her lap, and I register black plastic with notched silver metal.

She looks down, and I smile a bit when she holds it up for us to see. It's a key ring. Surprisingly, mostly-silent Fang is the one who voices the comment in all out heads. "Well, that'll simplify things."

We cross the parking lot quickly, and Max leads us into the place called Burger Betty's. Inside, Iggy inhales the smell of burgers and fries deeply. "I want my room to smell just like this."

"It would be an improvement." Max comments idly as she reads the menu.

"I don't eat meat anymore." Nudge announces to Max as the line moves up a bit. Max stares at her uncomprehendingly, and she elaborates. "Not after seeing the hawks go through rabbits and snakes and other birds. It's just icky."

The line moves up again, and Fang places his order first. "Okay." Max says to Nudge, putting a hand on her shoulder. "But you still need lots of protein."

Iggy orders next, and he waits with Fang to receive an identical tray before Fang leads him over to the most secluded booth. Max orders for herself and Gazzy, and then finally Nudge and I get to place our orders. "Uh, could we have five fries, a chocolate shake, a vanilla shake, two triple burgers, three cherry pies two-" I nearly stumble over the words "apple pies, two triple burgers, a large Volt and two more triple burgers only hold the burger?"

The woman behind the counter looks at us quizzically. "You mean you want two of the triple burgers with just the cheese on the bun? No meat?"

I nod on Nudge's behalf, and the woman punches it into her little machine before waving us over to another part of the counter.

_I'm so hungry I could eat ten burgers_. I send to her with a sympathetic smile as my stomach growls.

She looks at me and smiles a bit weakly, grabbing my hand. _I could eat twenty_.

We get our trays after a minute and head over to the table, where I proceed to inhale my lunch. "Nudge, Gazzy. Don't look up." Max breathes. "In three seconds, jump over Fang and out that exit door."

I scan her mind as I bite into my burger, and the most prominent thought is _Erasers_. Well, that simplifies things.

Nudge, Gazzy and I jump simultaneously over Fang's head and out the fire exit, dashing at top speed across the parking lot to the red van. We buckle up as Max pulls out, Erasers only just beginning to swarm out of the restaurant.

She yanks the wheel around and guns it, crying out with the rest of us when a fully morphed Eraser falls under the wheels. Roaring over the curb and through the shrubs that line the lot, she fights for control as our stolen vehicle careens out into traffic.

She cuts through a gas station, and when we roar back out into traffic on the other side Nudge screams. "**Max**!"

She swerves micro-seconds before we run into the trailer head first, but my window screeches as is rubs against the dull green metal and the outside of the car makes an unhealthy crunching noise.

"It's so **bulky**!" Max cries, taking yet another corner at forty and barely continuing out the other side.

"It's a **van**." Fang says, and if Max hadn't been so focused on weaving in and out of traffic she would've sent him a death glare.

"I'm gonna stop!" She yells over the engine noise, knuckles white on the steering wheel. "Jump out and get in the air as fast as you can!"

"Okay!" We call back, hands on our seat-belt buckles.

Suddenly Max yanks the wheel and we nearly spin out before the tires find grip and we shoot off into a corn field. Dry stalks smack against the windshield, and the crunching noise is too loud to hear anything outside of the vehicle. Max zigzags, and soon we hit a road.

She guns the engine again and we leap out onto the asphalt, plowing straight into a sedan. My right arm comes up instinctively to protect my head as I scream in shock, my voice lost amongst the noise of the collision and other screams.

Pain throughout my right arm a minute later tells me I've probably broken it at least a little, and a throbbing in my forehead announces I hit Iggy's seat. I moan quietly in pain, and Max's voice filters through to me.

"Report." She calls weakly.

"Okay here." Fang is the first to answer, and I hear Max's mental sigh of relief.

"Okay here." Nudge says next to me, and I look over to see her pale as a ghost except for the bruise already forming where she hit Gazzy's seat. She registers the blood flowing from Max's nose around the same time as I do, and her eyes widen in shock.

Me? One banged up arm. I've seen worse. "I'm alright, mostly." I try to move my arm and wince, no way that's just banged up, I think I just felt my elbow joint turn.

"It's just my nose." Max assures her, managing to sound in control. "Head wounds always bleed a lot. Look, it's already stopping."

The last bit is a lie, but I figure it's better not to call her bluff just now. "I feel like, like pudding." Iggy groans, straightening up in his seat. "Pudding with nerve endings. Pudding in great pain."

_At least he's intact._ Is Max's thought, and then her concern goes to Gazzy.

"I feel sick." He clarifies, his pace bloodlessly pale.

**Crash**!

We all duck instinctively, and I hiss in a breath as my arm bends the wrong way. Yup, definitely broken. All around us windows smash under pounding guns, and then Erasers pop the doors open. I undo my seatbelt one-handed and practically vault over the back seat, Iggy and Gazzy hot on my heels.

Kicking open the trunk, I throw myself out into the air and whip out my wings, pumping hard to avoid hitting the ground. Behind me on my mental radar are Iggy and Gazzy's mind dots, but Nudge is still down on the ground.

Her scream pierces the adrenaline haze in my brain and starts me moving down again, falling straight between Iggy and Gazzy. Unerringly, Iggy's hands shoot out and grab my jacket, pulling him down a bit before Gazzy grab on as well. "You can't go down there, Ed! They'll capture you too!"

I struggle hard against them, but reason seeps slowly into my brain. He's right. If I go down there the Erasers will capture me too and then where would I be? _With Nudge_. The little voice whispers to me, and I try my best to ignore what it's insinuating.

A spray of bullets rip through the air past us and Iggy lets go of me, darting instinctively higher. Gazzy releases my jacket as well and I snap open my wings, rising after them.

_Ed!_ Nudge cries out to me silently, and I bite the inside of my cheek.

_I'll come back for you, Nudge! I swear I'll rescue you if it's the last thing I do._ Another spray of bullets shoots by my head, and I'm forced even higher, up to where Iggy and Gazzy are waiting.

Spinning in synchronization, we flap off back towards my cave with the hawks without a word. A few minutes later I hear Gazzy sob quietly. He may be tough, but he's only nine years old. He couldn't protect his little sister and she got kidnapped back to the School. He doesn't know what's happening to her there, and now he's just lost the rest of his family except for Iggy.

I frown in sympathy, and what seems like ages later Gazzy breaks the silence. "We have to go back. We still have to save Angel."

Iggy nods gravely. "That's why we're going back to the hawks." Gazzy and I look at him quizzically, and he must sense our stares because he smiles a little. "We're going to get some help."

"But who can help us with this? We can't just go up to some random police officer and say 'Oh, hey, we're mutants. Our family got kidnapped by sicko scientists and are being held at this hellhole called the School can you come help us save them?' Fat chance they'd believe us."

He pouts angrily, but my eyes open wide. "The hawks. We're going to ask the hawks to help us!" I punch the air. "Yes! I'll call them." I screw my eyes shut and clench my teeth, sending the message like an arrow through space to where my avian family is. _Help. Rescue. Help._

A chorus of angry, scared responses fills my mind and I smile. "They're coming to meet us! They're gonna help!"

Ten minutes later we meet the hawks again and pull a U turn, zipping back to the School at their top speed. As the sun begins to turn red and set, we near the School. Ari is taunting Max, and I can't see what happens but suddenly he's batting the cage around like a huge, metal paddleball attached to his hand.

Abruptly, Max's cage flies away from Ari's hand and lands next to a cage holding a bird girl I don't recognize. The kidnapped Angel. Max flips her lock open and orders the girl out before Ari begins to attack her cage again. Dropping down with the raptors, I land on Nudge's crate and pop the latch open with my good hand, holding the door open for her to step out into the rosy light of the setting sun. She hugs me tightly as soon as she's properly out, and my face heats. "Thank you, Ed. You came back for me."

She lets go and I look away, my cheeks on fire. "Uh, yeah. How could I leave you here? This place is shit."

She smiles at me, but shrieks when an Eraser grabs her ankle. A hawk drops down into his face, however, and I recognize the dark stripe as Havoc. "Thank you, Havoc!" I call out as Nudge takes off, and he screams the wild cry of a fight before biting the Eraser's nose.

Taking off myself, I broadcast a message to my flock of raptors. _Safe. Home._ They rise up as one, and my chest constricts slightly at the sight of feathered bodies littering the yard.

"Max! Maximum!" Tucker's voice draws my gaze down, and I scowl at the bastard. "Max! **Please**!"

I turn and zip up to where Nudge is crying happily, holding Angel tightly. In Nudge's shadow, Angel's dirty blonde hair looks brown for an instant, and I see a flash of her with long, braided pigtails. "Nina Tucker, we meet again."

I smile, but when she looks at me the expression on her face is so serious I can no longer see Nina. This girl is an old soul. She knows way too much for a six year old. "You're Ed." She says solemnly. "I heard about you from the whitecoats."

She shudders at the fresh memory of pain, and her psychic powers block me from comforting her. Max joins us looking worn and old and angry, but nobody says anything. Two hours of flying later, Max and Fang trading off carrying Angel, we land in my cave. Angel collapses on the floor, and Max sinks down next to her, stroking her hair.

"I thought I would never see you again." She says quietly as we sit near her, a single tear rolling down her face. "They did all kinds of stuff to me, Max. Terrible. Terrible. Terrible."

"I would **never **have quit trying to get you back." Max says, voice overflowing with emotion. "There's no way I would ever let them keep you. They would have to kill me first."

"They almost did." Angel says, her voice breaking. Her words hurt me as well, in a normal world she would be in first grade. She shouldn't have to deal with pain so great at this age.

"This is how it should be forever." Iggy says a while later. "All of us together."

Max looks at Fang, and he senses her gaze. Turning, he sees her holding out her left fist. They form the stack, and once again Nudge places my hand over hers. Max shoots her a look and skips my fist, but I make a point of tapping everyone's hand.

"I'm just… so thankful." Max says without preamble, and we look at her with surprise. I may not know her very well, but I know she isn't one to talk about feelings. "I mean, this made me realize how much we all need one another. I need **all** of you. I love you all. But five of us, or three of us, or two of us isn't **us**. Us is all six."

Nudge squeezes my left hand tightly, my right being bound in a jacket-sling, and I realize that she'd sidled up next to me while Max had my attention. _No, us is all seven now. You're part of the Flock now, Ed. To me, at least. I need you._

I blush at her unspoken words, closing the connection between our minds with a snap as Angel throws her arms around Max's neck. "I love you too, Max. I love all of us too."

"Yeah, me too." Gazzy says, his round face lighting up with a smile. "I don't care if we have out house, or a cliff ledge, or a cardboard box. Home is wherever we all are, together."

Max hugs him close and he snuggles against her, happy. We fall asleep later, me after trying to make a tiny star out of the cave floor, and some time later are woken up by a torrential downpour.

"Nudge, wake up." I shake her gently. "Come on, it's raining."

She sits up and I pull her to her feet, leading her by the hand out into the chilly rain, which wakes her up quickly. The water drips down my bangs and into my eyes, hiding the tears that are seeping out.

Fang rubs Max's shoulders when she shivers, and I look over to Nudge, only to find the ledge next to me empty. I check my mental radar, and turn around. She's cuddled up to Angel, the two of them talking quietly about something. Turning my back to her again, I stand silently in the rain as it soaks into my stolen clothes, trickling down my back between my wings and drenching me to the bone.

Max and Fang go back inside without glancing at me, and before long all of their dots are dim on my radar, sleeping peacefully. I look up at the heavy, dark clouds, and the rain masks my anguished tears. "Winry, Al, can you hear me?" I whisper, chest tight. "I'm sorry. I have to stay here. These kids don't know what they're doing, really, and I have to help them. Maybe they can help me get Alchemy to work." I swallow hard, tears streaming down my face with the rain. "But I promise, one day I'll come back to you."


	7. Chapter 7

**1-If I owned FMA, I would be drawing these fics instead of just writing them.  
2-Maximum Ride, I OWN IT! Kidding, I just wish.**

**A/N: Hi, I'm sad to say I was being lazy in getting this one up, but it's true. Anyways, you now have another chappie of Ed Ride. And my eternal thanks to everybody who faved this and/or put it on alert. You guys make my day.  
**

* * *

**Ch-7**

Fresh morning air slaps my face as I glide along behind Nudge, absorbed in the events of last night. Leading the first family I ever had in an attack on the school, seeing Ari again, meeting the blonde Nina that my new friends call Angel. And the final, best memory, popping the latch on Nudge's cage and helping her out into the brilliant light of the setting sun.

I smile at the last one, but a nagging feeling of something missing kills the smile quickly. Quickly sifting through the memories, I stop on a shot of the whitecoats. Scanning their faces, I realize that my whitecoat is in the mob, looking straight at me. While Nudge glides up next to Max, I put aside the whitecoat and try, unsuccessfully to dissect what I felt last night. Why did it feel so good to hold Nudge close? Why, when I was standing out in the rain, did I wish Nudge was standing next to me?

A sudden stab of pain scatters my thoughts, and I instinctively try to shut off the connection. An arc of white lightning stretches between Max's head and mine, and the half closed link blasts open again. Something is trying to pour an enormous amount of info into Max's head, and her brain is shunting it over to me.

Her wings fold under the onslaught, and Nudge screams. "Max!" Then a few seconds later my wings go limp as well, and Nudge's voice rises to a shriek. "Ed!"

Throwing my wings out flat, I let animal instinct take over as I steel my consciousness against the explosion in Max's brain. After minutes that seem like hours, the stream of raw data suddenly stops and I am able to close the link. I pump my wings to rise up again, but having that much dumped into my brain at once has left me shaky. Almost like going through the Gate, but less painful.

As I climb unsteadily, I realize that Nudge is flying next to me, her dark face a ghostly pale. "Hey." I say softly, "I'm fine. You don't have to worry about me." She sniffs a little and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. As Fang begins to descend towards a forest, I stretch my arm out and briefly twine my fingers with hers. "I'm okay now."

Fang and the others land in a large clearing, but when I see Nudge coming down a few yards away, I follow her instead. Landing on a branch next to her, I see that she's wiping away tears. _Nudge?_ I venture tentatively. _Are you okay?_

Without warning she falls towards me and wraps her arms around me. _I was so scared, Ed._ She sobs in her head, knowing that I can hear her. _First Max, then you… If I'd lost you both I don't know what_—

I pat her on the back. _Its okay, Nudge. Nothing happened. I'm fine, Max is fine, we're all in one piece._

She sniffs, _I was so __**scared**__. Please don't do that to me again, Ed._

I smile and hold her until she's done crying, at which point I let her pull away, perching back on her branch. "Okay. I won't."

She smiles at me, and we fly over to the campsite, where Max is just beginning to stir from her tight ball of pain. "We're back." Nudge announces bravely, her voice still scratchy from crying.

The whole gang looks at us, Nudge's puffy red eyes, the way we're standing so close together, and I can hear them draw assumptions before mentally shrugging it off. When Max is back up again we're all set to little tasks of making camp, with Gazzy and I being charged with collecting firewood.

"You deserve her."

I look at Gazzy picking up sticks a few yards away. "What?"

"I said you deserve her. Nudge, I mean. You two make a cute couple."

I feel my face heat up, and the words come pouring out in a rush. "H-H-H-H-How no th-th-th-that she's just a really good frie…. like family!"

Gazzy snorts. "Riiight. You just keep thinking that." And with that he grabs one last fistful of wood and heads back to camp, leaving me alone with the thoughts he put in my head. I dawdle a few more seconds, picking up a few more twigs before heading back myself.

I dump my load with Gazzy's and watch impatiently as Iggy lights the fire. After what seems like forever the flames have died down enough to not burn our dinners to a crisp, and Fang passes out food. Grabbing a hot dog, I spear it on my roasting fork and turn it slowly over the glowing coals and little bright tongues of flame.

Seated between Nudge and Iggy, I joke and laugh, and for that short while I feel like a normal kid. With relatively full stomachs, we sprawl of the ground after our meal to sleep. I curl up next to Nudge and watch the flames, but some un-named tension prevents me from actually drifting off.

"Max, wake up." Angel's voice lends itself to the tension, and I'm able to identify that she has to tell us something before she senses me in her mind and throws up walls.

"I'm awake." Comes Max's response . "What's up, Angel?"

"I've got a secret. From when I was at the School. It's about us. Where we came from."

"What do you mean, sweetie?" Max asks quietly.

Angel twists the hem of her shirt, "I heard stuff."

Max holds the little blonde closer, "Stuff people said or stuff people **thought**?"

"Stuff people thought." Angel says, then, "No, I want to tell you now. I mean, it's just stuff I sort of heard. I didn't understand all of it—chunks were missing. And it was from a couple different people."

"From Jeb?" Max asks, and the flash I get from her distracts me to not hear the next few sentences. It's Tucker, the whitecoat who was yelling at Max yesterday. No wonder they hate him, he's a bastard in both our worlds.

"Which we **did**." Max says proudly, and I go back to listening to their discussion.

"Yeah. Anyway, I found out that another place has information about us—like where we came from."

Max's brain goes into hyper drive, "Whaat? Like our life span? Or where they got our DNA?"

Angel nods.

"Well, spill it!" Iggy demands, startling all three of us who are already awake and waking all who weren't.

"They have files on us, like, the main files. They're in New York. In a place called the Institute."

"Like, mental institution type Institute?" I can't help but ask.

Angel shakes her head. "I don't think so. They called it the Living Institute or something."

Max rubbed her back, "Was it in New York City, or upstate New York?"

Angel shook her head, "I don't know. But there's more." She pressed her face into Max's shoulder. "You know how we always talk about our parents, but didn't really know if we were made in test tubes?"

Max nodded, and Nudge scooted closer to me. "I saw my name in Jeb's old files. I really did," she stage whispered to me.

"I know, Nudge." Max interrupted. "Listen to Angel for a minute."

"Nudge is right. We did have parents—real parents," Angel blurts out, "We weren't made in test tubes. We were born, like normal babies. We were born from human mothers."

Immediately I see my mom, and just as immediately I see the horrible thing we made on that black day. That thing that wasn't her. Waving away the bad memories, I turn my attention outwards again, hoping nobody noticed me spacing out.

"Just because you're the youngest doesn't mean you have to be the dumbest!" I blink into Iggy's angry yell, and Max's quiet voice is a relief.

"Look," she says, taking a breath, "Let's all calm down and let Angel talk. Can you tell us everything you heard?"

Max brushes curls away from the little girl's face, "I only got bits and pieces." She says slowly, uncomfortable with the subject. "I'm sorry everybody. I've just felt yucky… and it all makes me really, really sad too. I don't wanna cry again. Awhh, I'm crying again."

"Its okay, Angel." Fang comforts her, handling her tears easily. "We understand. You're safe now, here with us."

Nudge seems about to explode, and her hand is squeezing mine so hard I've nearly lost circulation to my fingers. Gazzy moves closer to Max and hooks three fingers into one of her belt loops for comfort. Max puts one arm around him, and the other around Angel.

"It sounded like we came from different places, different hospitals." Angel begins slowly, "But they got us after we were born. We **weren't** test tube babies."

"How did they get us?" Fang asks, leaning forwards. "How did they get the bird genes into us?"

"I didn't really understand. It sounded like—like they got the genes into us **before** we were born somehow." She rubbed her forehead. "With a test? An amino… ammo…"

"Amniocentesis?" Max asks, and I can feel her anger towards the whitecoats.

"Yeah, that's it." Angel says with a nod. "And somehow they got the bird genes into us with it."

I can feel the curiosity of the group, and apparently Max can too because she says "Its okay, just keep going."

"So we got born, and the doctors gave us to the School. I heard—I heard that they told Nudge's mom and dad that she died. But she hadn't."

Nudge makes a gulping sound, blinking back tears. "I **did** have a mom and dad. I **did**!" She leans her head on my shoulder, and I let her cry happy tears there as Angel continues.

"And Iggy's mom—" Iggy tenses, his acute hearing focused entirely on Angel's voice. "Died. She died when he was born."

Iggy's face shows only grief after hearing this, and Gazzy hurries the topic along so his best friend can be sad in peace. "What about us?" He asks. "How could they get both of us, two years apart?"

Angel wipes her eyes, "Our parents gave us to the School **themselves**." She says before starting to cry again at the sheer horror of it all. "They **wanted** to help the School. They **let** them put bird genes in us, and gave us away for money." She gasps out through her sobs before just breaking down entirely. Gazzy leans against Max and follows his sister's lead, breaking down into sobs and burying his face in Max's shirt.

With the two little blonde haired kids crying on her and the fierce protectiveness on her face, they look almost like a family. "Did you hear anything about me? Or Max?" Fang's tone and posture are casual as he strips a stick of its bark, but I can sense his anxious thoughts as he waits for Angel to answer.

"Your mom thought you died, like Nudge." Angel said, still sniffling. "She was a teenager. They didn't know who your dad was. But they told your mom you died." The stick in Fang's hand snaps in two, his knuckles stark white and his eyes blank.

"What about me?" I blurt, unable to bear the tension of not knowing if this world's Trisha is alive or not. "Did they think about my parents at all?"

She frowns, and for one awful moment I think she'll say no, but then her mouth moves, forms words that I want to hear. "Your mom thinks you died, but she's still alive. She works there."

I lean forward, "Do you know her name?" I want so badly for her to say Trisha, but what comes out of her mouth shocks me so fully that I freeze in place.

"I-Isumi something. I'm sorry, Ed, I don't know her last name."

I blink out of necessity, and my face splits in a sarcastic smile. "Curtis. Her name is Izumi Curtis."

Max frowns sympathetically, "Your mom is a whitecoat."

An unwelcome memory pops to the front of my mind, and my smile widens with a scoffing chuckle.

"Ed? What's so funny?" Nudge asks, her curious face peering at me.

My smile shrinks to a grim, Mustang worthy smirk at the irony of the situation. "The whitecoat in charge of me. Her name was Izumi Curtis. My own mom made my life hell!" Then, quieter, "I'm Teacher's kid. I'm Teacher's kid and she doesn't even know it."

Max gives me an odd look. "Teacher?"

I stop breathing momentarily, realizing my blunder. Only Nudge knows about my past.

Max gets to her feet, towering over me with a distrusting scowl on her face. "I had my suspicions about you already, but now you're talking about one of **them **as if you're friends."

I gulp and glance at Nudge, who sends me a panicked glance. Our silent exchange doesn't go unnoticed by Max, who cracks down on both of us. "Nudge, over by Fang. Now."

With a furtive glance at me she obeys, and Max returns her focus to me, now all alone with the dead fire at my back. "Who are you, Ed? I can't let you stay until we all know the whole story."

I gulp nervously, and the first words out of my mouth are unbelievably stupid. "You would never believe me."

She scowls, grabbing a fistful of my T-shirt and snarling right in my face. "Try me."

I scowl right back at her, "Fine. I'm from another world. Back there she was my teacher. Happy?"

Max's scowl deepens. "Wrong answer, kiddo. Tell the truth. Who are you, where are you from, and how do you know that whitecoat? Answer me!"

I snarl right back at her, "I already told you. I'm Ed. I'm from another world. And in my first life she was my teacher!"

Max looks extremely mad, and draws back one of her hands to hit me, but Nudge latches on to her before she can take a swing at me. "Max, stop it! He's telling the truth!"

Max glares at Nudge, then seems to realize what she's doing and let go of me, stepping back. "Nudge, you tell me. What did he say to you?"

Nudge thinks for a moment, "He said he's from a place called Amestris in another dimension."

Max raises her eyebrows. "And you believed him? He could be a spy! He could be from the School!"

Nudge crosses her arms. "But he's **not** a spy. He **escaped** from the School like we did. He's **nice**, Max."

"Bad guys can be nice too!"

"Like Jeb?"

Max's angry fire turns to dangerously sharp ice in the blink of an eye. "Yeah. Like Jeb." Still anxious of another brain attack, I open a little hole in the wall between our brains and listen to Max think. The ice thaws, and I see her decide to finish this argument later.

"Angel." She says quietly, her head bent down and her face hidden. "Did you hear anything about me?"

The little blonde jumps, startled. "No, Max. I'm sorry."

It quickly becomes obvious that she has nothing more to say and Nudge is, not surprisingly, the first to speak. "I'm going back to sleep. I just want this day to end."

The sentiment is echoed by Gazzy, and without command we all go back to our sleeping places. Nudge curls up against my back, and I feel my face heat as she puts an arm around me. _I don't know whether or not to be jealous._ She thinks at me. _I mean, you've got a mom, but she's a whitecoat._

I snort. _Not just any whitecoat. __**My**__ whitecoat. My own personal torturer until, what, a week ago? Back home she was bad. Here she's worse because she doesn't care at all._

Nudge rests her head on my shoulder and tightens her arm. _It's okay, Ed. No matter what, you've still got us._ She doesn't send me the next line, but I hear it anyways. _You've_ s_till got me._

I blush more, and gently take her hand in mine. _Thanks, Nudge. You have no idea how much that means to me._ We fall asleep like that. Cuddled up together with smiles on our faces, hovering on the verge of more-than-friendship. And you know what? I think I kinda like it.


End file.
